There Blogging

The speech was everything he needed. I was there–it was electric. Kerry was better than I ever thought he could be. Up there in Blogger Alley, we were all clapping and cheering by the end. And we had read the speech hours before. Until we heard the delivery, it didn’t register as being that special. But, his delivery was perfect.

Well, “I was there” is exactly the problem with analyzing Kerry’s speech. How many people who were there did Kerry need to sway?

Correct answer: Zero.

Kerry needed to move some portion of the estimated 25 million Americans watching tonight. How many did he convince to vote for him? How many did he convince at least enough not to vote for Bush? How many people did he move into the Bush column?

I don’t know. Neither does Jeralyn — even though she feels like it was “electric.” Of course it was electric. It’s electric to be a Nuggets fan in Denver, even when the Lakers comes to play. You know they’re going to lose, but, hey, they’re your team.

That’s not to say that Kerry will win or Bush will lose — and that brings me to Jeralyn’s closing line:

However, unlike a partisan like Jeralyn, I won’t call the election three months early, just because I heard a speech in a room full of thousands of people who think like I do. In fact, I go out of my way to show you why this election is still too close to call.

I applaud those bloggers who, like Jeralyn, took the time and expense to travel to Boston (and later, to New York) to provide live blog coverage of the convention.

But is it too much to ask, for a little less cheerleading, and a little more analysis?

(Even if the “analysis” consists mostly of martini-fueled quips?)

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43 Comments, 43 Threads

1.
Kerry Saved My Hamster, too.

Stephen,

Great basketball analogy, and I agree, but sooooo 2003.

A couple of thoughts:

Kerry’s first daughter gave a horrible speech, so much so that I felt uncomfortable for her. Not even counting her professed familiarity with her Dad’s 6 foot 4 inch body.

Alexandra (of Cannes fame) gave a stirring, and seemingly sincere, speech and I was impressed.

Max Cleland is officially the mascot of the Kerry campaign. Good thing he is in a wheel chair or Kerry would be saying “Max who?”

Kerry’s main message was “Government is THE cure for what ails you.” If you are sad, we are coming to help. Even if you are happy, we’ll fix that too (rich people).

In the 1700′s, mankind began to develop a model of governance based not on inherited titles, but on simple human liberty.

America, the first to step into this model has been challenged throught its life to maintain its democracy from threats from outside, and from within.

Since the time of our beginning, mankind has had two major world wars where the very definition of human liberty was threatened. The first half of the last century, the facists -who believed that the state was more important than the individual. The last half, the soviets, who believed that ideology was more important than the individual.

Now, in the first half of this century we face another threat to human liberty. The jihadis, who believe that religious piety is more important than the individual.

There are can be no more compromise with the jihadis than there was with the Soviets or the Fascists. We cannot engage in a ‘cold war’ with an enemy who’s stated desire it is to die in their efforts to win the war. They do not want to live. This is not a border dispute or a trade negotiation. The jihadis do not want a better world or a world partitioned into “ours and theirs”. Their philosophy is such that any joy, any happiness in life itself is an affront to the greater afterlife under allah.

For human rights, womens rights, for gay rights, all the rights we in live within to survive in its home here in the western worlds traditions, we must fight, and we must win. There is no glasnost, no summit to attend to allow us to live “side by side” in peace. We must fight fast and furious.
Our enemies, armed with no more resources than the average neighborhood drug lord has at hand, can create conditions which will result in the deaths of thousands.

I’m often told ” war is not the answer” by my lefty friends. I respond “it is, if genocide and slavery is the question”. I have a daughter, I know exactly what we are fighting for, we are fighting for a world that does not look at her as someones property.

To back up what Stephen said about ‘if not being a time of war, id be looking at John Kerry”. I can say the same. Bush, despite all the spittle covered invectives by moveon.org is not a conservative. By anyones measure, hes barely a Republican. But that is not the question. The question is “what do we – the american people – need to do to win the war”. And when I say win, I mean “win” not the way Truman meant win, or Nixon, but the way Grant and both Roosevelts meant “win”.

I cannot see how engaging in a Civil War at home helps us engage in the greater war abroad. Kerry and the democrats have decided that Civil War is the first step towards winning the broader war. I cannot support this.

I cannot support a party that believes believes that Michael Moore is a great patriot,while giving scant attention to the sacrifice of Pat Tillman.

I cannot support a party who supports Al Sharpton. Al is often funny, but Im not in a laughing mood. We are at war…

I cannot support a party who just held a convention and did not once recognize the liberation of 5 million people within Afghanistan. many of those who did the liberating were democrats. Yet, despite that, it was as if Afghanistan became a plot point in a marx brothers movie.

I cannot support a party who looks upon the average Iraqi as if they were victimized only by the US Army,as if Iraq was the disneyland of the middle east until we arrived.

I cannot support a party who looks upon France with its long sordid history of abuse of human rights throughout the middle east as the arbiter of our power around the world.

I cannot support a party who believes believes that we invaded afghanistan so halliburton could make a pipeline.

I go to bed every night praying I dont wake up to what I saw on 9/11. I got bed wishing that the next day would be like it was on 9/10.

But the war is not over, its barely getting started, and I’m struck with the understanding that the roughest battle in WWII wasnt Stalingrad, Pearl harbor or midway. The hardest battle in WWII was just convincing the worlds free people that the war needed to be fought.

we are at war, and we can lose

My grandfather hated FDR, but when war visited his generation, he put it aside. You cannot win a war by fighting amongst yourselves. We must do the same. We must learn that the most important thing in the world is not ourselves, but the world we leave behind. If we fail in this war, all the programs that John Kerry wants to give us will count for nothing. If we win, then he seriously shorted what might be.

A great man once said Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. He was right,and he was a Democrat. He was a democrat at a time when Democrats believed that America should win the cold war. If he were running today, he might get my vote.

Who knows about the future, but for me, for now, I’m sticking with the man.

Stephen: I was on the floor (as a guest) in 1996 to see Dole’s acceptance speech. I was very skeptical going in that Dole could beat Clinton. Dole is certainly no orator, but the San Diego Convention Center was electric in response to his speech. Walking from the site with thousands of partisan delegates, the positive vibe was overwhelming, and I thought ‘You know, Dole’s gonna win this thing.’ A few days later I returned to my skepticism. The energy in a convention is unreal (and oftimes surreal). Any reliable analysis of ‘effect on electorate’ of an acceptance speech must be undertaken from the living room couch in front of a television set.

I remember Slate’s Saletan making exactly the same electrically heated bread statement regarding Bush 4 years ago. The reality is that nobody can predict the future, or, when things are this close, even make very educated guesses. People with an ounce of sense, or any check on their ego, refrain from doing so in cicumstances such as these. Yes, yes, roughly half the predictors will crow the first week in November, but they’ll be no more sensible than the roosters who are convinced that they caused the sun to rise.

The speech was a failed attempt at triangulation on the issues of war and terrorism. Every time the senator would sound like he was at the GOP convention, some bizarre phrase like “back door draft” would bring the listener back to reality.

The delivery was pretty good but not great. Like George W. Bush at the 2000 debates, the bar had been lowered for Kerry because he is so “nuanced” (when did “nuance” and “deception” become synonyms?). The fact Kerry could stand and speed through a speech led some to think he really broke through tonight. The reality is much different. Who will win this November? No one really knows now, as you wrote, and the events on the ground will make this an election that can’t be predicted very far out. All things being even, though, I wouldn’t bet the milk money on Kerry. Tonight’s yeoman performance, against a backdrop of a very dull convention, means things will be tied again very soon…not a good position for the challenger.

Kerry’s basic sttement was that he would wait for bad guys to murder more Americans before he did anything about it; that he wuldn’t do anything about he if he couldn’t keep the French happy and involve the UN, and that America was best kept strong through a program of ultra-high taxation and shamelessly pandering to every minority group available… and that this would earn us respect abroad, amke us stronger at home, and defeat terrorism.

Thanks, John.

BTW: Am I the only one who gets mental images of Elian Gonzales getting kidnapped at gunpoint or of the tanks going in at Waco when kerry uses the phrase, “Strong at Home”?

Frank Martin, you should post more often. This is some of the best stuff I have seen in a while. I couldn’t agree more. Bush had a big following going into 2000 and some of them have fallen away (including my sister who was a rabid supporter) and they have “cooled” their enthusiasm. I fear his BS stances on immigration, Medicare and some other choice tidbits may be his greatest liability. His assets however far outweigh them and this is what we need to build upon.

FDR was hated by many of the conservative bent and he made his share of blunders. I have read recently that many of his supposed best programs were a total waste of time and money. WPA, CCC and so on were boondoggles which did little good and only took resourses away from valuable enterprises – namely rebuilding the military. We got lucky on WWII and frankly we cannot afford to get caught with our pants down again. We need a strong, vital military and we need to aggressively pursue the scum (read that Jihadis) that inhabit this earth. They must be found, executed and sent to hell (without their complement of virgins) and their ilk wiped from the face of the earth.

I don’t normally condemn an entire religion but, if you try to completely buy into Islam, Mohammed was not a guy you wanted to know or be known by. He was ruthless, cruel and his “justice” was final. The “unbelievers” or “infidels” must die was his mantra and to try to diminish that by telling us the BS that Islam is a religion of peace is doing civilization a disservice and ultimately will implement our distruction. Hey I call them as I see them and I call a spade a spade and I call somebody with a sworn religious hatred of all I hold near and dear something I and the civilized world needs to consider and act upon.

If you were an Iraqi citizen that had listened to Kerry’s speech, how would you feel right about now? Pretty shitty, I would think. “Nothing to see here, let’s move along”. Not one mention of anything good coming out of Iraq. I’ll be curious to see how some of the Iraqi bloggers react to the speech. I also wonder how/if the Republican convention can highlight some Iraqis to show how much better off they are today than under Saddam.

I watched the conventioneers all week in town and they all look happy, floating even. I can understand that – for the faithful, this has got to be pretty heady stuff. And at the climax, they’re bound to come out with a ‘we’re gonna win this attitude.’ In that, the convention was a roaring success. Trouble is, that’s not what the convention needed to do. It needed to reach out to swing voters, and to the extent it did last night, it was the heavy militarization of the moment. Oh, and his kids like him. It reminded me of Captain Queeg and his dog, and I suspect it will play just as well in Peoria.

Kerry enegerized the energized but I don’t think it’ll be contagious. The Bush folks ought to take a lesson from that and adjust accordingly.

Dunno about historically, but I think this makes a certain amount of sense.

Look at it this way:

There’s some percentage of war conservatives who are dismayed by Dubya (distinct from, say, economic conservatives, who may be equally dismayed, but for different reasons). There’s some percentage of liberals who were unsure about Kerry regarding the war.

Both of these groups were wondering if Kerry would say something in his speech that would make it clear that the WAR on Terror would continue, that it wouldn’t be a pull-out and it wouldn’t become law enforcement-plus.

Both of those groups were probably trending neutral/unsure in polls and in markets.

Both of those groups found out last night that they really DON’T have another choice. You want the WAR to continue? Vote Dubya.

(Conversely, war conservatives who are happy w/ Dubya, liberals who are unhappy w/ the war were probably going to trend Kerry anyway, and last night’s speech didn’t push them away from their default choices.)

Every single discussion is about substance or delivery or both. Did he pull it off? Did he convince the undecideds that he was tough while showing that he is a real person?

On MSNBC Joe Scarborough was arguing that “the pace was terrible and he did not wait for his applause like Clinton would have”. Andrea Mitchell kept going on and on about “it’s what he said not how he said it. Just like Kennedy in Berlin and Reagan at the wall”. There’s just one problem; Kennedy and Reagan deeply believed what they were saying.

Reality check…KERRY DOES NOT BELIEVE ANY OF THIS SHIT! And guess what, the terrorists dont believe it either.

I started into an Alterman post on Kerry’s speech. It’s rather gushy, of course. He calls it a masterpiece. He makes some good points on the execution. Such as the subtle allusion to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 by mentioning the Saudi Royal family. But the strategy is a failure. The non-choir see through Moore, or atleast take him with a grain of salt. The bravado with lack of content rings hollow. Swing voters will see his campaign as an attempt at manipulation. And an appeal without substance.

You may ask, then, how will Bush’s apparent manipulation play with swing voters? Very differently, Bush’s quietness, his slow play, are very different forms of manipulation. He isn’t manipulating his audience, he’s manipulating his opponents. Dems and the media.

Scene 1: The convention floor, immediately after Mondale’s acceptance speech is thronged with deliriously joyful conventioneers. An ecstatic, weeping woman proclaims, “There’s no way we can lose with this ticket, just NO WAY!”

You’d think one of the network commentators would play the contrarian, and not praise Kerry’s speech like it was the Sermon on the Mount. You’d think that–and you’d be wrong. Of course, as Evan Thomas of Newsweek said… Update: Writing…

I must take issue with your “I don’t trust Kerry to lead it”. The chicken hawks have blown this war. As a liberal who supported the concept of this war (but not the timing) I can only hold the current administration in contempt. Again a bunch of armatures have waged what should have been a strategic win into a pile of crap. Rumsfeld et al are not fools, so the only reason I can think of for not to providing the required manpower to police Iraq afterward (both the secretary of the army and the army joint chief said so (and were fired)) was a political one. Let

Poor bobo doesn’t have a clue what ‘armature’ means. Hint: despite the similarity in sound between ‘armature’, ‘armchair’, and ‘amateur’ an armature is not the same thing as an ‘armchair general’ or an ‘amateur’, either of which would make sense in context.

More important, bobo demonstrates for the 500th time that people who call supporters of the liberation of Iraq ‘chickenhawks’ are themselves without exception assholes.

Hey bobo,
Why don’t you use an armature to remove the tin foil from your head? Chicken hawks are people who talk tough but don’t take action. Just like you who “supported the concept of the war but not the timing”. We should have spent five more years trying to talk the French into it…right? Isn’t Bobo spanish for nut job?

Like most right wing nuts, the responses to my position have nothing to do with what I said rather something irrelevant such as a spelling error. Throw the skunk on the table to divert attention from the issue at hand. Your puerile responses remind me of a particularly bad corporate VP I knew, who when no one understood him he repeated himself, only louder, rather then rephrase the request-very Dilbert. None of the administration (oh if you look hard enough you might find one or two) have fought in the military, sorry GW playing fighter jock protecting the skies of Texas doesn

Sorry Bobo, it’s hard to take you seriously. You’re claim that you support the war, but not the timing, and that there’s some major failure just doesn’t make sense. It makes you seem like you’re claiming to be something you’re not. The closest thing I’ve noticed to a big failure was the problem with Iraqi police last year. For the timing, yeah, they took their sweet time, but I assume they were building the coalition. How do you go back start earlier?

Poor ‘bobo’ demands that I say something relevant. After you, Alphonse. You haven’t made an actual argument yet, and complain that I insulted you as if you had not adorned your own previous post with such words as ‘chicken hawk’, ‘chicken shit’, ‘cover their ass’, ‘pile of crap’, ‘spin doctoring’, ‘screwed up’, and so on.

Let me spell out very slowly and carefully why calling others ‘chicken hawks’ makes you an asshole: because prior military service has nothing to do with presidential warmaking skills. You might think that it would, and perhaps it should, but in fact it doesn’t. As others have pointed out over and over, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were excellent wartime commanders-in-chief, despite their total lack of military experience. (And you can’t defend FDR by pointing to his wheelchair. He didn’t contract polio until he was almost 40 and had already served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in wartime — World War I. He could easily have served in the Phillipines instead of going to Harvard if he had wanted to.) On the other hand, the biggest screw-up in American military history was the Vietnam War. Opinions will differ as to which president (Johnson, Nixon, maybe Kennedy, maybe even Eisenhower) was most responsible for that massive failure, and what they all should have done instead (play to win, or get out sooner), but it doesn